Suchergebnisse

Critical of corruption in government and toleration of organized crime; Italy.

With the rise of feminist and cultural protests, political liberalism has been criticized for promoting a version of public neutrality that does not take diversity seriously and marginalizes sexual, religious and cultural minorities. Thus, the "politics of difference" has been seen as a legitimate democratic alternative to a kind of liberalism hostile to diversity. Stephen Macedo aims to show that political liberalism respects a broad range of conceptions of the good and of ways of life, but cannot accommodate minorities who reject pluralism itself in order to maintain their group identity and whose claims and practises impede civic education and undermine toleration. Adapted from the source document.

Jean-René Suratteau, Did the « Directoire » have religious policy ?
An established scholar of the period, the author reopens the case concerning the religious policy of the Revolution after Thermidor and investigates the first separation of Church and State and the attitude thanks to which tented to alternate repression and a certain toleration encouraging a renewal of Catholic religious practice. He follows the misadventures of a constitutional church, restored with difficulty and marginalized, describes the rather unsuccessful attempt at setting up a civic religion and concludes that the Directoire hardly had any clear policy and even less a stedfast one ; it was doubtless impossible to establish a coherent policy within such a short period.

Abstract Protestantism in Northern France in the 17th and 18th centuries is distinguished by its great scattering as well as by its very small numerical importance. Yet, despite the shock of the revocation, living communities go through the last century of the Ancien Régime. From the religious standpoint, some signs show that all along this period, the Protestant people retain a living faith: gatherings are held from the first months of the Edict of Fontainebleau, " new converts "criticize the dogma and the discipline of the Catholic Church or refuse the interfering of th parish priest in the important moments of their life. The forms of resistance and the rythms of persecution vary anyway from a community- even from a period - to another. Some churches, especially in Picardy, take advantage of the nearness of the border and also of the presence of the parsons who are with the garnisons of the Barrier. Other churches which are more isolated find a welcoming place in the capital and their members frequent the chapels in the embassies of protestant countries. However the ecclesiastical structures get reorganized late only from the middle of th 1760s onward, not without difficulties. The Edict of toleration permits these communities whose population is weakened to reappear in broad daylight where they have survived.

Contemporary discussions of secularism in India have been constrained by the tradition-modern (western) dichotomy. For some, secularism is originally a Christian doctrine adapted to modern western conditions, & means the strict separation of church & state. It is also predominantly a single-value doctrine, motivated either by liberty (as in the United states) or equality of citizenship (as in France) more suited to single-religion societies than to the socio-cultural context of India where it is more appropriate to rely on resources of multiple & indigenous religious traditions for the sake of quite different values of peace & toleration. Others argue that India has the civilizational resource from which to retrieve its own conception of secularism captured best by the phrase 'sarva dharma samb-hava' (equal respect for all religions). I argue instead that India has worked out a distinctive conception of the secular that was at once Indian & modern. This remains a practical conception rather than a coherent doctrine or theory, & can thus be called Indian secularism only by extension. This conception builds on traditional resources as well as on the legacy of the British colonial state but innovatively transforms them. Many distinctive features characterize it. First, it deals simultaneously with inter-religious & intra-religious domination. Second, it has an explicit multi-value character. Third, it rejects strict separation. Separation does not mean exclusion or strict neutrality but what I call principled distance. Fourth, it implies neither respectful indifference nor active hostility but respectful transformation of religion. In short, secularism inherits the tradition of religious reform that began in India both prior to the advent of colonial modernity & because of a critical engagement with it. Finally, Indian secularism is an ethically-sensitive practical settlement & less a scientific, rationalist doctrine worked out by ideologues & implemented by political agents. Adapted from the source document.

Jews in the class structure of Hungary. An essay on the historical roots of the anti-semitic crises of the twentieth century.
The first crisis of anti-Semitism in Hungary occured immediately after World War One. The present essay attemps to elucidate the conditions which made this crisis possible by means of an analysis of the massive social integration of Jewish immigrants in the nineteenth century and of the structural disequilibrium this produced in various areas of Hungarian society. A survey of the historical circumstances of the establishment of Jewish communities in Eastern and Central Europe brings out the singular nature of the Hungarian situation : from the time of the edict of toleration proclaimed by Joseph II in 1781, Hungary offered optimal conditions for neweomers which elicited a massive immigration. As a result, towards the end of the century there existed a historically unique combination of a large number of Jews raised «in the Oriental manner» and the possibility of their becoming integrated «in the Western manner».
The political policy of Magyarization and of integration pursued by the liberal and nationalist nobility led to such measures as the citizenship law of the Estates General of 1840, the Jaw of emancipation voted by the Revolutionary Assembly in 1849 (though its effects were only ephemeral, its was the first of its kind in Eastern or Central Europe), and the definitive law of emancipation which foliowed the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867. This policy openend the way for the socio-cultural assimilation of the Jews. At the same time, the incapacity of this same nobility to enter into the bourgeois professions left the field free for the mobile elements among the immigrant Jews to take over control of the country's wholesale trade (especially in agricultural products) and to enter the intellectual occupations. After the compromise of 1867 there no longer existed any obstacles to the development of capitalism, and the Jewish bourgeoisie, endowed with remarkable business skills and in possession of liquid capital, steadily strengthened its position, playing the major role in the creation of the country's industrial, financial, and commercial infrastructure, while simultaneously remaining outside the governing classes.
Thus, towards the end of the century, a division of the work of social domination became established in which the descendants of the nobility, who were often impoverished, the gentry), took up new positions in the official administration while the bourgeoisie, the majority of whom were Jewish, took possession of the economic power. Like the dominant classes, the middle classes, -notably the intelligentsia- remained divided into Jewish and Christian fractions, each of which was marked, at first, by different social origins, by a different ethos, and by different collective ambitions and each of which occupied relatively separate positions within the intellectual and liberal professions.
At the beginning of the twentieth century one can observe, on the one hand, a fusion of the Jewish and Christian intelligentsia in the fields of intellectual production which were situated far from the center of socio-economic power and which included a large proportion of Jews, and, on the other hand, an increasing degree of competition between Jews and Christians in the other areas of middle class activity. This competition was exacerbated by World War One, which provo-ked a dramatic contraction of the markets of economic and symbolic production. This development, in turn, served as the pretext - helped along by the collapse of the liberal political regime - for an anti-Semitic activism in the middle classes which continued to increase until World War Two.